Back-up twice and store them separately.
Never run the Lacie Set-up Assistant, format a new hard
drive through the Disc Utillity.
This happened to me a few months ago & I wanted to put it out so others can avoid it at all costs.
We had returned from a 10-day shoot in Charleston. With this particular client we always back-up our shoot and give them a full back up too.
While editing, the client experienced a power surge
in their building and fried the hard drive, thus requested that we send them another back up of the shoot. No problem.
Not wanting to release the original back up I attempted to make an additional copy for the client, here’s what happened:
The 10-day shoot was on our original back up a Lacie 1TB hard drive all 750 gigs. I took a brand new Lacie d2 Quadra 1TB and as prompted, ran the Lacie Set-Up Assistant to prepare and format the new drive. I have done this numerous times and never had a problem.
Upon running the Lacie Set-up Assistant I noticed that the original HD with the clients shoot was no longer on the desktop and I now only had an icon called ‘Lacie’.
This was a moment when I literally lost my breath. I double-checked and remounted the clients HD; she came up as ‘Lacie’ with 950gigs available….not good!
It’s not what happens in life that’s important, it’s how you deal with what happens that counts.
Plan A:
Upon realizing that I had just erased a full 10 day shoot, my 1st question of how the hell did that happen, was quickly replaced with lets fix and find a solution to this major problem.
We set-up a San Disc Rescue Pro scan and were very relieved to see the files come in. The file numbers did not correspond but we were getting the files nonetheless.
The mountain of data to scan, all 750gigs soon became our next concern. The client was waiting for the HD, they had a deadline to meet and we were getting 100 files a day, which dwindled to 30 files / day as the computer began to loose RAM.
Plan B:
A quick search online and I found DTI Data who were quoting reasonable prices and no payment if data was not recoverable.
These guys, with their expedited service were able to recover and ship the HD, with original file names in tact to our client within 5 business days.
I definitely recommend their services. When you’re in a pinch like this you want to be dealing with a Pro Team!
DTI Data
Phone: 866-438-6932
I contacted Lacie regarding this matter see their response below.
Posted: May 6, 2010 @ 1:33 PM
Good afternoon Drew,
I attempted to call you today, but unfortunately I was not able to reach you. The bug in the Setup Assistant that you described has been addressed, but a few drives did get shipped out without the patch that fixed the issue.
There are a few options open to you. The quickest would be to run a software utility called Data Rescue that we recommend to recover lost files. It is a third-party application that may be purchased here: http://www.prosofteng.com/lacie/. There is a free demo of Data Rescue, available here, that you may try before you decide to purchase the full version. This demo will allow you to scan the disk and assess the likelihood of being able to recover your data with this program.
Another option is to send the drive to us so that we may attempt to recover your data ourselves. I would like to point out that we would be using the exact same software, Data Rescue, that I recommended previously. The downside to this option is that we are located in the United States, so shipping could be expensive.
The third option is to send the drive to a professional data recovery company. We recommend DriveSavers. This is going to be the most expensive option open to you, but also the safest. If your data is critical to you, I highly recommend contacting DriveSavers for advice or an assessment of your situation.
Please let me know how you would like to proceed with us. Although I am happy to assist, you may also try to resolve this matter with LaCie Canada if you wish: http://www.lacie.com/ca/contact/.
Best regards, Alex
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